“Things have changed so much since I left and came home”
A statue of a monkey god guarding a temple in Bangkok. Tom Northrop took the photo on his recent trip to Southeast Asia.
Tom Northrop
Tom Northrop, a South Strabane resident and former publisher of the Observer-Reporter, is a seasoned world traveler. He decided about a year ago the time was ripe to visit Southeast Asia.
Everything was on track until the coronavirus reared its head. At that point, the 63-year-old Northrop and his daughter and traveling companion, Emily Northrop, mulled their options on whether to go ahead with the journey.
“I don’t know that we seriously considered canceling it,” Northrop said. “But we talked about it.”
They left Feb. 25 and returned Wednesday. So far, both are fine. When they were in Thailand, they walked through several infrared scanners that gauged their body temperatures to make sure they did not have a fever. They strolled through a similar scanner when they entered Myanmar, Thailand’s northern and western neighbor, and Cambodia.
In Thailand, many residents were wearing masks, but that is par for the course given the pollution that blankets parts of the country, Northrop said. And the reaction to the coronavirus was different there than in the United States.
They’re taking precautions, but “no one in Thailand is overly concerned,” Northrop explained.
In the United States, “there is a franticness and a panic that did not exist in Thailand or Cambodia,” Northrop said.
His theory on why there was a relatively placid response in that portion of the world?
In a locale where the temperature frequently tops 90 degrees, the attitude seems to be, “We don’t think we’re going to get it because it’s so hot,” Northrop said.
“You could drink water all day and sweat it out,” he said.
If the coronavirus had a silver lining for the Northrops, it was that many popular tourist sites were depopulated, with American travelers bailing out on their trips and Chinese tourists staying away.
“There were not many rooms booked,” Northrop said. “All the lights were off, and all the rooms were reserved for Chinese tourists.”
In fact, one of their tour guides told Northrop and the group he was with that they never would have gotten photos as good as the ones they were able to get if a more typical contingent of tourists had been there.
They traveled back to the United States through Qatar and landed in New York after 22 hours in transit. The Northrops didn’t take any specific precautions on the flight, aside from wiping down the area immediately around them. Northrop said they received no screening upon their return to the United States.
As a precaution, Northrop and his daughter are going to quarantine themselves for a handful of days even though they have shown no symptoms of having the virus.
“Things have changed so much since I left and came home,” Northrop said.